Everything I Have Is Yours

by Eleanor Henderson

  How much time did I spend doing this, mentally constructing acceptable narratives to present to other people about what life looked like in our house? Hours upon hours. How much time did other people spend worrying about what life looked like in our house? Minutes, maybe. I’m sure we were a passing fascination, maybe a concern. What is up with them? Is he sick or something? Where do they get their money? What did it matter? What did it matter if I told them “He lost his job” or “It was too hard” or “He quit before he could be fired”?

  Some people I told one of those versions. Other friends, our friends in RCA, Stu—I told something that felt more like the truth. All of those versions, plus “His mom got sick” and “He got sick” and “He panicked” and “He’s supremely depressed” and “We’re really struggling” and “I don’t know if he’ll work again.” I named it. And the shame, old-fashioned, ugly, a little of it left my body through my mouth.

  * * *

  There were times when I could name it, could choose a euphemism or choose the truth, and there were times when I was so frightened by the truth I didn’t have any words for it at all. One evening a little before Christmas, I came home from work and Henry was crying and Aaron couldn’t handle it and by the time I took off my snow boots and jacket he was rushing to the bathroom, the little half-bath off the kitchen, struggling to find his meds, any meds, something in a little crushed white box, and when I realized what he was doing I ran to him and fought him for it, both of us pulling on it, me crushing half of it in my hand, trying to wrestle it down to the toilet and him down to the floor, to reality, both of us pressed up against each other, his ear in my face, my chin in his neck, and through gritted teeth he was saying those words again, I’m going to do it, a monster turned not on me but on himself, and I thought, this isn’t happening again, and the fear and rage whipped out like a third arm and I hit him on the ear, I’m boxing his ears, I thought, and then I bit his ear, until he released the box or I tore it from him and it went flying into the toilet bowl. It wasn’t the romantic cascade of pills that could be flushed. It was a wet pasteboard box of generic medication, floating like a pitiful raft. This was when I realized that Nico was standing in the kitchen watching us.

  “He’s okay,” I said. “We’re okay.”

  Aaron caught his breath. “I’m okay, Bubba,” he said, and I fished out the box and bagged it and hid it and then later threw it away, after hiding all of the rest of the pills in the house, too. The only pills I didn’t hide I gave to Aaron, made him take, made him lie down in our bed and tell me what was going on, what was he thinking, and he said it had come out of nowhere, the urge to put his lights out, the crying, it sent him back to being a little kid himself, it sent him over the edge. I listened. I apologized. He apologized. As quickly as it had come on it passed. I looked around the nighttime chill of our narrow room. I breathed. The college kids were gone; the neighborhood was bathed in a snowy quiet. We had not yet repaired the ice dam-damaged ceiling, or replaced the closet curtain with mirrored doors. I focused on the wall behind the bed, which I had painted denim blue, and on that wall hung a painting my mother had done years before I was born, two figures without features, a couple posed on a bed, the man lying on his side, head propped on an elbow, the woman sitting cross-legged, leaning in. My heart slowed. I sat cross-legged on the bed, our blood-stained white sheets, Aaron on his side, I ran my palm along his ribs. Close your eyes, that’s it, it’s over now, and I waited until he was asleep before I closed the door and went to Nico’s room and sat next to him on his bed. Henry was downstairs watching Teen Titans Go!

  “What were you and Dad doing?” he wanted to know.

  I sighed. I wanted to be honest. But I didn’t want to scare him. I definitely didn’t want to tell him his dad had been trying to take an overdose of pills. “Dad was having a hard time, honey. Sometimes when Henry cries, I guess he gets panicked. Why was Henry crying?”

  Nico narrated the squabble, a small matter. Henry had hit Nico and Nico had hit Henry back. “But why did you hit Dad?”

  I froze. “You saw that, huh?”

  He nodded.

  “He was really upset. I was trying to calm him down.”

  “You hit him to calm him down?”

  “Yes. I know. I shouldn’t have hit him. I apologized.” I cringed. “I actually bit him, too.”

  “You bit him?”

  “On his ear. It’s not okay to hit. Or bite. I know, your brother bites and hits! It’s hard to explain.”

  Nico gave me his too-wise-for-an-eight-year-old look. Like he had my number. Like he was the one here to advise, correct, and comfort me.

  “Listen. You know what depression is, right?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Your dad, he’s what we call clinically depressed. He takes medicine to help him feel less sad. But sometimes he still struggles.”

  “He’s sad he lost his job,” Nico pointed out.

  “Yeah. That, too.”

  “I don’t care if he doesn’t have a job. I mean, I know other dads mostly work.” He still had trouble with his Rs. “I just don’t want him to be depressed.”

  “I know. I don’t either. But he might always be depressed. It’s a disease, like anything else.”

  “And he’s sad he’s sick. I mean, I’d be depressed too, if I was sick.”

  I laughed a little. “Yeah, me too.”

  “I just want to know one more thing.”

  He had his arms crossed now, his negotiation pose. He used it to lobby for more allowance, for a new video game, for another item on his Christmas list. Please ask for another Christmas gift, I thought. Do not ask me about suicide. Anything but that.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  He said, “I want to know if Santa’s real.”

  I laughed again, then gasped. “Nico. Really?”

  He was firm. “I want to know. I want you to tell me the truth. I can take it.”

  “Nico,” I said. I was practically crying already. I had not expected this question so soon. I was three years older when I had begged my mother to tell me, and then when she had, I had felt stricken, angry at her, embarrassed that I had extended my childish belief for so long, betrayed by the lies parents got away with telling, all of it an elaborate hoax. That was the year my own parents had been enduring a difficult time—my uncle’s death, my father’s breakdown, their near separation—though it wasn’t until I was older that I understood the size of it, and though I had sympathy for them there was anger too, that I had been kept in the dark. That I hadn’t been trusted. I didn’t want Nico to be angry at me, not tonight. I couldn’t take it. But I didn’t want to look at him and lie. I believed him, that he could take it.

  “Okay,” I said. I put my hand on his back. “Santa’s not real.”

  He nodded. “I knew it.” A smile grew on his face. “So it’s just you and Dad? You leave us all the presents?”

  “Yup. You mad?”

  “No. I kind of figured. It’s okay.”

  “I’m sorry. I know it’s kind of like lying. But it’s kind of a fun thing to pretend. And now you can help us keep the story alive for Henry.”

  Nico liked that—a chance to exert maturity over his brother. He had been initiated into a rite of adulthood. He had needed it tonight, this little bit of authority, of control. Still, I cried, from grief and also from relief. “I didn’t want to tell you yet!” I pulled him into my lap. I wrapped my arms around him and hugged him and cried.

  “I’m okay, Mom. I promise.” He patted my shoulder. “You’ll be okay.”

  * * *

  It was a mark on our clean slate. A relapse of sorts. It was as painful as if he’d fallen off the wagon—that he’d wanted to kill himself again, had gone through the motions, however briefly. I knew I wasn’t supposed to tally, but I tallied, I despaired. I knew having suicidal thoughts, even acting on them, wasn’t a moral failure on his part, just as I’d learned that having an alcoholic relapse wasn’t a moral failure. Ment
al illness was a disease and alcoholism was a disease and morals had nothing to do with it. I knew it wasn’t a failure on my part, either. But it felt like a failure on someone’s. Our higher power’s, maybe. It felt unfair. I felt we deserved more. I had told my brothers and my dad, in the email after his suicide attempt, when we’d gotten into recovery, when we were giving it another shot, that I was seeing a new Aaron. Maybe not Aaron 2.0, I joked, trying to be realistic. But maybe Aaron 1.5.

  Sometimes he was Aaron 1.5 and sometimes he was Aaron 1.0 and sometimes 2.0 or 3.0 and sometimes some negative number, in the crib, in utero, bathing in his mother’s nutrient-deficient amniotic fluid. Sometimes he was just Aaron and I was the one relapsing, reversing, so scared of his regression that I saw it everywhere that I brought us there all on my own. Sometimes I told myself that maybe we were past it, that maybe recovery was a crutch we no longer needed. The sweet smell of normalcy beckoned, and I wanted to just fucking be like everyone else.

  It was that summer that we were at Sam’s new house in Alexandria, sitting at the black brushed granite island, big as a queen bed, while Keri mixed mojitos. Van Morrison on the ceiling speakers, our kids running around the house with my nephew’s new pet bearded dragon, my dad pointing his cane saying, Whoa, slow down, fellas! It was a new kitchen, and the old, adjacent kitchen had been transformed into a bar, with a wine fridge and a liquor cabinet and a petite sink where Keri squeezed limes and mashed mint so strong we could smell the juices from across the room.

  Aaron had been flirting with alcohol. He flirted with it, I thought, like he flirted with suicide, making jokes about it to ease the tension—a temptation he thought about but wouldn’t go near. But now he was maybe going near this one. He kept poking it, poking me. He’d stopped going to meetings. He’d stopped meeting with Rich. He even mentioned it to Stu.

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?” he asked Aaron.

  “Probably not,” Aaron said, shrugging. “But I’m fucking dying anyway.” He held up his scorched arms. “It keeps coming back. For three years, it’s been back! The last time it went away, I was drinking.”

  “Why do you think that is?” Stu asked.

  “I don’t know! I wish I knew. I’m already drugged up on all these fucking meds. They fuck with me more than alcohol does. Depakote? Seroquel? I don’t even know what that shit is. Alcohol I know.”

  “True,” Stu said. “But they’re carefully calibrated drugs. Their use is monitored. And they’re not addictive like alcohol.”

  Aaron waved his hand. “I don’t know if I even believe in that anymore.”

  I didn’t know if I believed in it, either. I knew I was losing faith in finding a cure for Aaron’s illness. I knew his sobriety made me feel safe. But it also made me feel scared. I was as scared of alcohol as I was scared of suicide. I was scared he’d try one or the other again. Maybe it was a kind of deal I made with him, with myself, his higher power: if he drank in front of me, not at home, not alone, just when we were out, if I knew just what and how much he was drinking, if he didn’t hide it, it would be okay. I told myself it was his choice, but the truth was I still felt it was within my control. If he drank with my blessing, it wasn’t a relapse.

  I knew it wasn’t my blessing to give, or Keri’s. She presented the offer without pressure. Aaron raised his eyebrows at me, and I said, detaching with love, “It’s your decision.”

  And Aaron said, “Sure, I’ll take one.”

  And I said, “Make it two.”

  And Keri presented us our drinks, and we thanked her, and we lifted the glasses cold and sweating and knocked them together, like two heavy heads.

  Later he’d tell me that when we’d taken a trip to New York that spring, he’d already gone to a bar and had a gin and tonic while the boys and I were at the hotel. Just one drink, he admitted. Just to tell himself he could do it and stop.

  Who understands the power of alcohol, what it does to the body and the brain? It does something, magical and merciless. Aaron’s demons scattered, back to their cages. His skin cleared, his mind cooled. We told Stu about the drinking. We didn’t tell our friends in RCA.

  * * *

  Well, I told Kate. She understood. Not everyone in the rooms would understand, she acknowledged. Aaron did not tell Rich, for fear that he might disappoint him, or trigger him, but anyway, they didn’t meet up anymore. Rich and Kate had split up, actually, sort of—Kate had asked Rich to move out. Aaron helped him move. They still cared about each other, still attended RCA, still worked on their coupleship, from under two different roofs. A coupleship could look like anything, she showed me. Other people didn’t have to understand it or condone it. You could make it work any way you wanted. Actually, “make it work,” my favorite motto, wasn’t quite right. “You have to change the sentence,” Kate said. “It can work.”

  * * *

  Later that summer, we got in a fight. Something stupid that had nothing to do with alcohol. I wanted Aaron to go to Movies in the Park with us. He didn’t want to go. It was Jurassic Park. We liked Jurassic Park! Why wouldn’t he go? I wanted all of us sitting under the stars, under the blanket, sharing that really good vegan curry from the food truck, making memories. But he was moody and stubborn and he didn’t like mosquitoes and he didn’t like crowds and he didn’t feel like it. So what? Go without me. I was resentful, felt slighted. I ask for one simple thing! Come to the movies with us. Let’s be a family! Let’s do family things! I didn’t say, Let’s let other people see us do family things! Let’s post a picture of us doing family things together!

  We left, the kids and I. I huffed. “Is Dad coming?” How many times had they asked that? Is Dad coming? Nope! I loaded the beach chairs into the car and we were off. Aaron was wearing a black tank top we still called a wife beater. He didn’t wave to us as we backed out of the driveway.

  We weren’t three minutes away, just down the hill, when my phone rang. Aaron’s name came up on the ID on the stereo. For a moment, I was flooded with satisfaction. He had changed his mind—could we come back and pick him up? I had successfully guilted him into assenting. I answered the call through the Bluetooth speakers and his voice filled the car. Except it wasn’t really a voice but a kind of high-pitched moaning. It sounded like someone having a panic attack, or possibly a heart attack, possibly because he had just swallowed a bottle of pills. He was crying.

  “What is it?” I asked. “Aaron? Are you okay?”

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered through his tears.

  Of course. Of course he hadn’t changed his mind but the moment we had left him, abandoned him, he had tried to kill himself, and was calling to say sorry, sorry he had done it, he didn’t mean to, sorry—

  I hung up.

  I didn’t want the kids to hear.

  “Mom? What’s wrong with Dad?”

  “Hold on, guys. It’ll be okay.”

  I yanked the car over on State Street on the corner of the Commons, not a real spot but a loading zone, and I turned off the car so it wouldn’t pick up my call. “I’ll be right back.” And I stepped onto the sidewalk and dialed nine-one-one.

  I told the dispatcher that I thought my husband had just taken an overdose. Why did I think so? Because he’d done it before. Because we’d gotten in a fight. Because he called me in hysterics and I hung up so I wouldn’t scare our kids. I gave her the address. They’d send an ambulance right away.

  Then I called Aaron back. I prayed he’d answer.

  “Why’d you hang up on me?” His voice was still weak, but he sounded more like himself.

  “I didn’t want the kids to hear. I called the police. They’re on their way.”

  “What?”

  “What did you do, Aaron?”

  “Why the fuck did you call the police?”

  “What did you take?”

  “I didn’t take anything. I kicked the suitcase against the closet! I broke the mirror.”

  I looked around. It was a summer evening in Ithaca. People were walking by in
pairs, in shorts and sunglasses, drinking iced lattes.

  “Wait. What? Why were you crying like that?”

  “Because I broke the mirror and I knew you’d be mad at me and you’re already mad at me. We just got those fucking closet doors and they were so expensive. Jesus! You called the police?”

  “I’m sorry! You sounded so fucking freaked out!”

  “I knew you’d think I did it on purpose, that I went in a rage and threw the suitcase at the glass. But I didn’t! It was an accident! Oh, fucking Christ.”

  “I’m sorry. Look, just explain.”

  “You explain. Call them back.”

  “I can’t call them back. They’re like one minute away.” The police station was around the corner from our house, even closer than I was now.

  “Well, come home and meet me and tell them. They won’t believe me. I’m not going back to the fucking hospital.”

  I plotted. My brain moved quickly, too quickly, apparently. “I don’t want the kids to see. I’ll bring them to Jaime’s, and then I’ll come right home.”

  I got back in the car and told the kids everything was fine and it was just a misunderstanding but I had to go home and check on Dad and did they want to hang out with Jaime for a while? I called her on the way over and of course she said of course bring them over and I was there in five minutes, saying thank you, thank God for you, and kissing the kids good-bye.

  From the bottom of the hill I could see the cop car pulled to the side of our street, the ambulance with its silenced flashing light, another cop car around the corner, all of our chaos in the middle of Aurora Street, for the world to see on an August night. I pulled into the driveway. Aaron was sitting on the porch steps, calmly, barefoot in his black tank top and shorts. Three police officers and two paramedics circled him, and later he’d tell me how he noticed one of them stood behind him, to the side of the porch, in case he bolted. “You’re the wife?” one of them asked. I was aware in a distant part of my brain, not the animal part that was still running through the woods, but the human part that made sense of things, that he was the father of one of the kids in Henry’s class. Yes, I was the wife. I offered my version of events. My husband had been hysterical and I had overreacted. I could tell from the officer’s voice already that the night would end in No harm, no foul. I could tell from their postures that they were all chatting amiably, and he had them convinced, maybe even charmed, and that they were just ensuring he wasn’t on drugs or beating me up. We were lucky. We were so fucking lucky. And I felt sick with embarrassment. “Yeah,” I said.